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DPM 2012 SP1 Wont Syncronize my Disconnected Clients

Question

I backup data from a few different servers. Those all work fine. However, none of my Laptops are backing up and from what I can tell it's because there are no sync jobs running.

For all my servers (once a day) I see a sync job then a recovery point job. For my laptops I only see a recovery point job that says:

"No recovery point was created, either because synchronization has not occurred since the last recovery point was created, or because no changes were found during synchronization. (ID 208)"

There are in fact changes so these missing sync jobs seem to be the problem. How can I get these protection groups to start syncing again?

I can run Create Recovery Point manually and select Create a Recovery Point After Synchronizing and it works fine (once). So it "can" work. I just don't know why it's not automating the sync part because it goes right back to not creating
any new Recovery Points.

All replies

You will not see scheduled synchronization jobs for client protection because the clients initiate the syncs when they are online and connected to the network. If you logon to a protected client and open the dpm agent you should see the last successful
sync and have the ability to initiate a manual sync which should show as a running sync job on the dpm server.

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My laptops used to sync on their own just fine. All my laptops at this point in time are online and none of them are backing up.

Looking at the client side they all say Last successful Synchronization: 19 days ago+....that would be the last time I manually ran it from the server.

They also say Synchronization Schedule: Every 24 hours.

Those are the jobs I'm talking about. All of a sudden none of my clients are running that sync job therefore I am not seeing it on the server. It shows up under jobs even for disconnected clients.....when it actually runs.

Why would 100% of all of my disconnected clients no longer run this job every 24 hours like they are told to do?

Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Regards, Mike J. [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

If I run it manually on the laptop it seems to run (hourglass on the DPM icon, says synchronizing) however after it's done it still claims to have been last synced over 20 days ago. I see nothing new in Application or System Event Logs. Is there
some other log that it posts to?

If I run Create Recovery Point after Synchronizing from the DPM server then the client reports that it was last Synced xx Minutes ago.

I'm on DPM 2012 SP1 v4.1.3426. All clients are up to date. In fact, some of these laptops are brand new.

So at this point, I can only back them up if I run it manually from the DPM server. Sync will not run right from the clients....100% of them.

This will list the attempts to make a backup. The frequency of the log entries should match the synchronization frequency of the protection group + 15 minutes. So Every 24hrs+15 minutes In your case.

Now you can look at the backup job details in the DPMRACurr.errlog that matches the start time from the entry in the DPMCLIENTPROTECTIONCURR.ERRLOG.

Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Regards, Mike J. [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I'm not sure about the goofy IP's - but don't think it's related to the issue because mine are also the same.

The times in the logs are GMT adjusted for daylight savings. So pacific time zone would show times in the log as local time +7 hours.

For every triggerbackupForCleint entry in the DPMClientProtectionCurr.errlog there should be a companion entry in the DPMRACurr.errlog that should initiate a local snapshot of the volume(s) that we're protecting data on.

See if you can find these entries.

find /i "createsnapshotsubtask.cpp" dpmracurr.errlog

Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Regards, Mike J. [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

OK - this is probably something that cannot be troubleshot in a forum setting - please open a support ticket for a DPM engineer to assist.

Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Regards, Mike J. [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I checked a few other logs and some of them don't have createsnapshotsubtask.cpp at all.

I'm afraid I wont be taking that route. I've been down that road before. I'd rather blow out the entire machine and set it up from scratch since it makes absolutely zero sense that the problem is on the client side since it's 100% of all my clients.
I'll start by blowing out the entire protection group for the laptops and setting that up from scratch first.

If there's no actual answer for this then that's that.

I greatly appreciate the time you've spent on this Mike! I'll report back if the PG in general was the issue.

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